


You'd Not Like Me Were I Different

by Saraste



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Blue Mountains | Ered Luin, Day 1 : birds of a feather OR opposites attract, F/F, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nwalin Week 2017, Rule 63, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 18:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10973193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Dwalin had thought they were different from each other.





	You'd Not Like Me Were I Different

**Author's Note:**

> My second nwalin week, yay! This was a bit of a tricky one, as I seemed to end up combining both prompts for today. Was written after a badly slept night, so I'm sorry for any linguistic errors. Also, fem!nwalin 'cos there's never enough. (Lastly, I had plans to maybe try and write a chapter-fic with all the prompts besides the last one, but I'm not sure if I will. We'll see.)

‘Why must you always be like this?’ Dwalin asks, her voice has no heat, however, simply exasperation and pleading for things to be different, because she cares too much to like seeing Nori like this.

 

‘You’d not like me were I different,’ is Nori’s retort. She’s fidgety, still running on high emotion, sat on the chair where Dwalin had told her down onto when she’d come home, looking the way she does.

 

And it’s true, Dwalin knows so, yet… life would be easier if Nori were a little more proper, respected the law, abided by the same rules all everyone else, the rules Dwalin works to uphold in service of her cousin. In service of the King, even if a King in exile, for these Mountains are a borrowed home.

 

But if Nori were different, then Nori would be a law-abiding subject to the King, part of a society which now looks down on her, for being who she is, as if one could choose one’s origins. If Nori were all that, Nori would not be Nori, Dwalin’s love and heart.

 

Dwalin’s heart is Nori’s biggest catch so far, the most successful heist, even if it was given willingly, and more of an exchange, if anything, for Dwalin knows she has Nori’s hear, if not always her trust, for her red-haired beloved holds many things close to her heart.

 

Dwalin sighs and gestures with the damp cloth in her hand. ‘I’d like you better if you did not have such a skill to get yourself banged up.’ She looks at the bruising across Nori’s left cheek, the scrapes reddening her knuckles, at her disarranged hair, gripped and yanked during a fight, braids undone. If one of those had been Dwalin’s, she wouldn’t care of the consequences and would go after those who had hurt her love, but NOri is yet to assent to Dwalin’s braids, preferring a scandalous cohabitation with Dwalin, well, scandalous if she weren’t so skilled to sneak about so few even know that she is Dwalin’s love, and those who do are all kin on both sides.

 

Nori doesn’t look like she’s sorry, and even if she is, it’ll be because she’s made Dwalin worry on her account. That it is Dwalin now, who gets to worry, fret and exasperate at her, is a gift, a sign of Nori’s trust, Dwalin knows. Dwalin does not want to dwell on thinking how many times Nori has appeared looking like this in front of Dori, how many times Nori has heard these worn frayed words, seen the same worry on her sisters face.

 

‘Perils of the job,’ Nori says, light, soft, hissing when Dwalin, having taken hold of one bruised hand, gently wipes at bruised and bleeding knuckles. She leans closer in her own chair, opposite Nori’s, sighing.

 

Dwalin presses her forehead to Nori’s, not able to help herself. She’s big and strong herself and has no inkling about  _ why _ Nori doesn’t shy away from these sorts of bad situations, being what she is, smaller than most because life has not been fair on her, even if it’s made her tough. Dwalin would fight, and has, against several all at once but Nori shouldn’t  _ have to _ .

 

‘You know I hate seeing you hurt…’

 

‘Dwalin.’

 

‘Why must you always put yourself at risk, you don’t  _ need ---’ _

 

Nori shifts, abrupt, sliding from under Dwalin’s arms, up from the chair she’d been sitting in and paces across the floor, hands fisted at her sides. ‘Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do!’

 

‘But why must you?’ For Nori doesn’t have to do the things she does, Dwalin would provide for her and they both know it, Nori’s skill with cloth isn’t inconsequential, it could be her craft if she chose. Dwalin looks at her imploringly, frustrated, because she doesn’t understand this dwarrowdam who is her love, who she aches to braid to tell it to the world, who is everything she herself isn’t but who Dwalin can’t cut away from her life even when sometimes Nori feels more trouble than anything.

 

Nori answers so quick that she doesn’t have the time to censor herself. ‘Because I work for the King!’

 

Dwalin sees Nori’s eyes go wide in panic, her gaze dart about, her body tensing, ready for flight, because the truth is out, and it’s a truth that Dwalin knows as truth just by Nori’s reaction. And the truth is that they are more similar than Dwalin had ever thought they were. She catches up to Nori in quick strides when Nori’s almost at the door. She takes hold of Nori’s slim wrist, keeping onto her, not bruising her. ‘The King?’ she asks, voice low, wondering.

 

Nori’s shoulders are tense and she’s facing away, then she slumps and turns. ‘What use am I any longer, when I can’t even keep that secret from my lover?’

 

‘Thorin’s my cousin, Nori, I hate that he’s caused you trouble by having you keep this secret from me.’

 

‘The King’s cousin bedding the King’s Spy isn’t the best combination,’ yet whatever Nori is saying, her body is turning toward Dwalin and away from the door, but her eyes don’t look at Dwalin, ‘but I kept to my own counsel in keeping it a secret from you, Thorin did not make me.’

 

Dwalin can only think of the reasoning behind that, doesn’t want to think about the reasoning behind that, thinks in one slicing thought that this is why Nori’s always turned the talk away from braids when Dwalin brings it up, to be able to do what she does. ‘You thought it better I thought you a sneak and pickpocket with a penchant to get in too deep?’

 

‘Well, I’m not saying that I ain’t both of those to boot. I --- I just didn’t want you to think I was spying on you for the King,  _ your cousin _ .’

 

Dwalin hates herself for asking, yet still does, but he has to know for herself, has to know because of her relationship with Nori and her King. ‘Are you?’

 

‘No.’ Nori’s voice is firm, her face open and honest. ‘I just... didn’t tell you and then some.’

 

‘For how long?’

 

Nori sighs. ‘Before we became lovers.’

 

Nori dresses that up so nicely, referring to that one time when bickering had led to a kiss and groping hands out of sight in a dark recess, of gasping sighs silenced by hungry lips, bodies learnt by touch but not sight, of a hurried fumble that Dwalin had then thought would be a onetime occurrence… until it wasn’t, until she’d ended up with Nori in her bed all soft sighs and demanding hands and sweet kisses, all wrapped into one slip of a dwarf who was someone Dwalin shouldn’t have had no doings with, especially in her bedroom. And now here they are again, in Dwalin’s,  _ their _ , bedroom and Nori having revealed herself as someone Dwalin would have stayed away from had she known, because what she has with Nori, with her feelings and what Nori does, Dwalin is putting them all at risk.

 

Yet…

 

It doesn’t matter. Nori is sly enough no-one knows of her, if they did, she’d be… Dwalin will not think on that. What matters now, what only always matters is that Dwalin cleans up and bandages Nori and curls up around her in their bed, in their home, in the mountain which is home, for now, with the dwarf who stole her heart and shares her loyalty to the King and maybe dreams of going home one day, even if it’s a home Nori scarce remembers, being so young.

 

Dwalin tugs gently on Nori’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up and into bed.’ And she feels the last of the tension in Nori’s wiry frame leaching out of her, sees her face soften, a little smile appear on her lips.

 

‘Yes,’ is all that Nori says to that and it’s all that needs to be said, for now.

  
  
  
  



End file.
